Are You Still Grappling with the Viet Nam War

Carrying wounded soldier through a swamp. National Archives.

What really happened? The Viet Nam War was like nothing we'd every experienced before. It was a wedge the divided many young people from their parents, and others from their peers. Some of us died, some protested, and some left the country to avoid the draft. And many of us wish we'd behaved.

Did you go to Viet Nam and end up with Agent Orange health issues the rest of your life? Did you later regret your decision to enlist? Do you wish you'd done more for your country?

Did you protest the war? How did you first come to believe the war was wrong? In retrospect did you feel you were swept away by youthful idealism? Or do you wish you'd done more and had been more aware earlier than you were?

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Observation tower in Viet Nam. National Archives

I'm still attempting to understand a history that my generation lived through that remains unresolved. It seems like one of those things we don’t talk about much, like cousin Leah’s family secret.

Many of those who protested the war feel conflicted because they have friends or relatives who served. They don’t know how to place patriotism and feelings about an unjust war into a proper relationship.

We were told to believe what our leaders were telling us, while history has demonstrated and reiterated repeatedly that the war was a crock, a patchwork of lies from start to finish. Documents released decades later via the Freedom of Information Act confirm that the war was not only built on lies, but that the extent of the corruption and hubris was far worse than we imagined.

I recently wrote a poem about the death of a friend at whose funeral I was a pallbearer. Getting in touch with that pain showed me that I’d not yet fully processed that experience. The manner in which I continue to be drawn to reflect on the war shows me that this, too, is unresolved.

Maybe it’s not really possible to neatly package our experiences so we can put them on a mental shelf and be done with them. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I have a hard time believing that I’m the only one who is still struggling to understand what we went through in the Sixties and early Seventies.

HERE IS A LINK to 14 articles I've written in response to various triggers such as Ken Burns' Viet Nam documentary, readings and memories of various memories from my youth.

What's your story?

Throwback Thursday: Assassinations, Riots and the Temptations' Ball of Confusion

 This week was the 50th anniversary of the Robert Kennedy assassination on the heels of his California primary win. Two months earlier Dr. Martin Luther King was slain. The Viet Nam War was in full swing and the summer more than 100 U.S. cities would experience riots in the streets. Thinking about these things brought to mind the Temptations' hit single Ball of Confusion, which seemed to pretty much sum up the decade we had just been through when it was released in 1970. 

For this reason I thought I'd share the song here as 1968 still seems so fresh in some of our memories. Upon Googling it I learned that I'd actually shared the song in 2010, ironically on the anniversary of Bobby's brother's assassination, November 22. Here's what I posted on that occasion, as relevant as ever.

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THROWBACK THURSDAY

This weekend on Twitter someone wrote, "The Truth will set you confused." Clearly a parody on the well-known saying from the Gospels. (John 8:32)

Interestingly enough, just before the weekend I'd torn Matt Gruhn's editorial message out of the trade journal Boating Industry with the title Uncertain times. He begins with an unattributed quote: "Anyone who isn't confused here doesn't really understand what's going on."

Harry Truman once declared, "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." Straight talk from inside the Beltway.

Dylan at times addressed the confusion of the times in his songs as well, beginning one 1962 song with the exclamation, "I got mixed up confusion, man, it's a-killin' me."

All this is lead in to a 1970 pop hit by the Temptations which pretty much sums up the tenor of the times.

Ball Of Confusion

People moving out,
People moving in.
Why? Because of the color of their skin,
Run, run, run, but you just can't hide.

An eye for an eye,
Tooth for a tooth,
"Vote for me and I'll set you free,"
Rap on, brother, rap on.

Well, the only person talking about

loving thy brother is the preacher;
And it seems nobody's interested

in learning, but the teacher.

Segregation, demonstration,

integration, determination,

aggravation, humiliation,
Obligation to our nation.

Ball of confusion,
That's what the world is today, hey hey.

The sale of pills is at an all time high,
Young folks walk with their heads in the sky,
The cities aflame in the summertime,
And oh the beat goes on.

Evolution, revolution,

gun control, sound of soul,

shooting rockets to the moon,
Kids growing up too soon,
Politicians say, "More taxes will solve everything."
The band played on.

So, round and around and around we go,
Where the world's headed, nobody knows

Oh, Great Googa-Mooga,
Can't you hear me talking to you,
Just a ball of confusion...
That's what the world is today, hey hey.

Fear in the air, tension everywhere,
Unemployment rising fast,
The Beatles new record's a gas,
And the only safe place to live,
Is on an Indian reservation,
The band played on.

Eve of destruction, tax deduction,
City inspectors, bill collectors,
mod clothes in demand,
Population out of hand,
suicide, too many bills,
Hippies moving to the hills,
People all over the world are shouting, "End the war!"
And the band played on.

Great Googa-Mooga,
Can't you hear me talking to you,
Just a Ball Of Confusion.

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And the band plays on...